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Australia will hire 500 cyber spies to face China’s threat in virtual space

Rute Coelho

Facing a series of cyber attacks attributed to the Chinese government, Australia decided to reinforce its defenses and will invest a record $ 930 million in the area, says The New York Times

The $ 930 million investment that the Australian government will make in cyber defense and cybersecurity in the next decade is the largest the country has ever made in this area. It is justified by the frequency, sophistication and scale of online attacks, as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison explained, and also by a growing deterioration in relations between Australia and China.

“Our priority is to protect the economy, national security and our sovereignty. Malicious cyberactivity ruins those goals, ”Scott Morrison explained on Tuesday. According to information from Sydney’s secret services, an increasingly aggressive campaign by China to create, through alleged cyber attacks, create disturbances in the Australian government, in the country’s vital infrastructure and in industry.

In January last year, there was an attack allegedly carried out by Chinese hackers on the Australian Parliament’s computer systems. A year earlier similar attacks were carried out, by means attributed by security experts to Chinese hackers, the targets being the Australian Department of Defense and the National University of Australia.

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